Celebrate Your Derelict Wonderland
(No. 115) The old man and the holiday + Chapter 7 of The Lost City of Desire
[Today I write for a second about aging and the holidays. I also present chapter seven of my dystopian/utopian novel, The Lost City of Desire. The previous chapters are archived here.]
I am Christmas present
I didn’t enter adulthood with strong memories of wonderful holidays past. I was happy, in a kind of vindictive, late teenager way, when I didn’t return to my mother’s house for Christmas my second year away at college. I spent that Ding Dong day reading, having some drinks, and reveling in my freedom from the stifling traditions built around a story that I was raised to believe, but didn’t. Later, thanks to my in-laws, I grew to appreciate the holiday — I even found joy in wrapping presents beautifully, as they did. As I had children I sought to give them good holidays, at first with too many presents, and later with an emphasis on peace and good cheer. Now that they are the age I was when I started skipping home visits for the holidays, I try to put myself in their shoes. I try to provide context — a tree, which we’ll get today, presents, and some Pumpkin Spice creamer in the fridge that’s so sweet its like pouring pie into your cup. My oldest is home from LA. My middle child joined us yesterday from her home in Brooklyn, along with her very welcome boyfriend. And my youngest, who’s still at home, and her romantic partner, joined us last night for a couple of hours of ridiculously low-brow TV shows. The less Christmas performative I can be, the better the days are. It’s nice to be with people I love at this time of year when darkness descends on the city at 4:30 in the afternoon. It’s nice to celebrate, rather than act out, this holiday.
I remember eating hamburgers at a beachside stand in Natal, Brazil on Christmas Day, 35 years ago. I was with my kids’ mother, long before we had kids, and we felt free in ways I haven’t often felt. It wasn’t just because of the beach, the ease of the holiday, and the distance from our families and their expectations. It was also because we were deep in the moment that day, far from home, looking into each others eyes and laughing and talking about the world.
That is the holiday spirit I seek this week with all my children around the house, and as many of their friends as they’ll invite. This week we have my oldest daughter’s birthday celebration at her grandmother’s house (and we celebrate it again the next night at our favorite Japanese restaurant), a dinner visit from my wonderful stepmother, and then a visit to the kids other grandmother’s farmhouse outside of the city. As the only old dude in these gatherings of women (all my life there have been many more women than men), I am going to leave my armor at the door, release my joy and let the holidays wash over me. Happy Holidays, y’all.
And now, my novel, The Lost City of Desire. Previous chapters are here.
Chapter 7. Derelict Wonderland
My aunt and uncle expected me to be inside by nightfall, but I didn’t feel like going home. It wasn’t easy to listen to your elders these days. What did they have to offer, really?
Shelter? Just go pick an empty apartment, clear out whatever is rotten or ruined, and make yourself at home.
Food? Everybody hustled for their own anyway. I could get food as easily as the next person.
Protection? From what?
By the time I was 12 or 13, I could totally take care of myself. Why did I need to listen to some old people tell me what to do? Still, for the most part I did what I was told. The idea was that the older people, parents if you had them, could give you a little moral guidance.
As we walked down Sixth Avenue with our bellies full Joe said, “I just want something new, you know?”
I nodded, flushed with a feeling that he was, somehow, profound.
“Just something different from the same old same old, you know, working the farm and working some more. It’s the same people all the time, and the same things. But this right here is something else. I love being in the city.”
Across Sixth Avenue a large, hand sewn flag hung from an old flagpole, orange letters against a pink background reading: COZY PROVIDES. It was the flag of this guru named Cozy. He was all over the city. His men wore long beards and his women piled their hair high on their heads -- I’m not sure what they believed in. Below that the Sports Authority doors hung off their bent hinges , much of the clothing looted, but still a lot to grab, if you needed clothes for sports. What the hell were sports? Bed Bath and Beyond, the beyond was the big question as far as I was concerned, the doors held fast with thick chains and padlocks. People went in and out now via a broken window – someone had even taped cardboard over the sharp edges of the glass so no one would get cut climbing through. Then there was the obvious nature of The Container Store. It appeared to be a store that stored containers for people with stuff to store. And it was beyond the bath.
“What the…?” said Joe.
He walked over to have a look.
“Why would anyone need a whole store full of boxes?”
There, too, another COZY flag, and down the street, black fabric lettering sewn onto a scarlet background: Elvis’s Ashram.
“I guess we are all looking for God,” said Carmen.
Joe ignored her. He was so busy taking in all the signs and stores and the symbols of life long vacated. He took my hand and lifted it up in a gesture of incredulity, but all I felt was a jolt of electricity. I mean, I knew he wasn’t really holding my hand. But still. “You look around this city and you see that there was a whole weird life going on here, with lots of people doing stuff you can’t even imagine,” he said.
I nodded.
“Besides the trading posts upstate, I’ve never seen a store with anything in it that hadn’t been picked over to death,” said Carmen. “You have any trading posts here?”
Trading post? Was that like a post office? I’d been exploring in the old one up across from Penn Station. Creepy place. “Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds,” was cut into the stone on the front of the building. Seemed so romantic, from what I’d read. How about a total disaster? Climate chaos, disease and unparalleled corruption. Uh, sir -- I know what the quote over the entrance says, but no way am I going to deliver the mail today without a gun and a protective suit.
“Trading post’s were from the First Nation days, when the settlers were wiping out the Indians. They had a lot of them out west. It’s like, where you can bring the stuff you make or grow and they will trade it for other stuff that other people have brought in, or they’ll sell you stuff. I guess it's a store, but not much of one. Kind of what we do bringing stuff down to the city to trade,” said Joe.
“We just help ourselves down here,” I said. “It doesn’t seem like we’ll ever run out of stuff, the city’s so big. But sometimes it rots. Like cigarettes – I’ve got a good load of those but sometimes when you find a carton you open the packs and dust just falls out.”
“That sucks.”
“I know.”
We walked through my derelict wonderland, our bellies full of roast duck. It was dreamy.
“It’s amazing what happened, right? I bet all these people thought everything was going to last forever. And then, poof!”
“But they’ve still got everything on the other side of the wall,” said Carmen.
“You think?” I said. “That’s what everyone says, but I wonder what it’s really like over there. I’ve never met a Westerner.”
“They’ve got everything and then some,” said Joe.
I pictured mounds of food, lots of new clothes, some books, fishing poles. What did that mean? What would you do with all that stuff? I didn’t long for much really, except one thing: a working hot water heater. I’d seen it in a magazine at The Libray. I loved hot baths, and once in a while I’d heat up water on the fire and pour it in our deep bathtub. Imagine turning the tap and hot water comes out.
We actually had a hot water shower on the roof – the sun would warm the water that collected in a coiled black hose so you’d get 2 or 3 minutes of warm water. But that wasn’t a bath.
Just then a dragonfly zoomed near us, flew past and then returned. Drone?
We were near the Spirit Place, the Hall of Veils is what my Aunt called it. It was an old theater on Sixth Avenue where the veiled people meditated. The veiled people wore fabric over their heads and faces, the men and women both.
I had never been inside. No one I knew had ever been inside. But I had paused in front many times and it was key in my consciousness, one of those places that never quite leaves the back of your mind. For me it was a place of power. From the sidewalk you could feel energy pouring out of the place. Very weird. You’d see the acolytes around, dressed mostly in white, flowing pants and long shirts that kind of swished back and forth as they walked, almost like the wind was blowing even when it wasn’t. They always smiled, but never said a word. Joe and Carmen and I stopped outside the huge doorway that was open to a building lobby. In the far distance we could see four or five people sitting on cushions, incense smoke billowing all around them. They were sitting there, heads bent, asleep sitting up. Meditating, I’d been told.
Joe wanted to walk in, but Carmen put her hand on his shoulder.
“Let’s just leave them be,” she said.
Funny, but I got a strong feeling that Carmen wanted to keep the spiritists for herself. She didn’t want to share.
Joe stood still, fascinated by what was going on.
“It feels like they have power, some kind of power,” he said.
We stood there for a good 15 minutes. It was natural to get waylaid at this power spot. It had happened to me several times. I always left feeling lifted.
“What’s the sign mean? Radio City Music Hall”? Joe asked.
“No idea,” I said.
The three of us walked on towards home.
“So much to learn,” Carmen said. “So much to see.”
“That’s why I want to travel,” I said.
“You really think it’s good on the other side of the wall?” Joe said.
“I kind of doubt it,” I said. “But who knows. I do know that whatever problems they have they blame on us,” I said. “That’s why they have the wall. If those people see that we’re doing just fine they wouldn’t believe their leaders any more. It would fall apart.”
“How do you know that?” said Carmen. “I heard they had it good over there. That they had everything we didn’t have. Like electric. Stuff like that. Frozen food.”
“Terence told me. He and I talked about it a lot. He’s the only one that will talk.”
“I want to meet him,” Carmen said.
“Terence?”
“Well, let’s go by and say howdy, as he puts it. He knows everything there is to know.”